Public Broadcasting System’s educator support outreach

From the WGBH-PBS website:

PBS LearningMedia is part of the Public Broadcast System’s educator support outreach.
Interested in shaping an app to support ELLs with mastering STEM vocabulary? Here’s your chance.
Calling all middle and high school teachers! The Education Department of WGBH – producers of NOVA on PBS and co-producers of PBS LearningMedia™, the free online educational service – would like your input.

If you are a middle or high school STEM teacher (Science, Technology, Engineering or Mathematics) and your classes include English Language Learners, we invite you to complete this survey.

Your responses will be used to inform production of educational resources by WGBH Education. We will send a $50 Amazon gift card to a random selection of five respondents.

The survey will close on January 21, 2016. Thank you for your time and thoughtful responses.

Cut and paste the following link into your web browser to reach the survey.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/T7L73T7

I didn’t see a release date for the app once it’s finished.  But I’ll keep my eye on it.  If anyone spots it first, leave a comment!

 

EL Advocacy and Involvement in 2016!

Want to amp up your advocacy efforts for ELs? You have 17 days to shape EL education and include your opinions in how education history is shaped moving forward with ESSA!  From the Federal Register:

The Secretary [of Education] invites advice and recommendations from interested parties involved with the implementation and operation of programs under title I concerning topics for which regulations or nonregulatory guidance may be necessary or helpful as States and LEAs transition from NCLB and implement the ESSA.
The Secretary specifically invites advice and recommendations from State and local education administrators, parents, teachers and teacher organizations, principals, other school leaders (including charter school leaders), paraprofessionals, members of local boards of education, civil rights and other organizations representing the interests of students (including historically underserved students), representatives of the business community, and other organizations involved with the implementation and operation of title I programs.
During and after the comment period, you may inspect all public comments in response to this document by accessing Regulations.gov. You may also inspect the comments in person at U.S. Department of Education, 400 Maryland Avenue SW., Room 3E306, Washington, DC, between 8:30 a.m. and 4:00 p.m., Washington, DC time, Monday through Friday of each week except Federal holidays.”

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT the folks at the Federal Register.

Other opportunities to get involved as a change agent and local folks who are doin’ it!

  • KC-area’s very own, Laura Lukens hit the top of the list again on January 1, 2016, with GO TO Strategies!  Check out the link to TESOL national’s post about getting back to basics with teaching ELs: Scaffold, Model, Pronounce, Assess, and Read!
  • KCPS’s talented Allyson Hile is sharing her expertise through Leading Educator’s on January 20.  I’m planning to attend.  Will I see you there?

Leading Educator’s January Facilitated Learning Group on ELL Strategies!
Where: Leading Educators’ Office, Westport
When: Wednesday, January 20 from 5:30-7:30
Fee: No Cost!
Are you currently serving English Language Learners or coaching others who do? Are you responsible for leading PD on effective ELL strategies?  If so, join us for our January Facilitated Learning Group on ELL Strategies! Come learn from one of the most knowledgeable ELL instructors and coaches in the city, Allyson Hile – current Director of ELL for KCPS and LE alumna.
To RSVP, email sgermano@leadingeducators.org

What’s going on in your district or your professional development efforts that’s noteworthy? Post a comment and let us know. Happy 2016!!

Even more resources for multicultural youth literature

Those of you who attended my workshop on multicultural youth literature may be happy to know I’ve found more resources to support the inclusion of quality kid-friendly lit from around the world in classrooms and school libraries. (I’m pretty sure that’s a run-on sentence, but forgive me it’s almost time for winter vacation!)

  1.  How about the idea of reading around the world?  A great concept, huh?  Easily adaptable to an all-school challenge perhaps?  If you haven’t see this TEDTalk by Ann Morgan, it’s very worth the 12 minute time-investment to spark your curiosity about multicultural literature.  Another score, Morgan’s blog also provides her complete reading list from the entire year!

2.  An EL teacher-colleague and friend highly recommends the World Stories site.  After spending a little time checking out the site, I’m impressed!  Not only are the stories submitted by youth, they have downloadable PDF versions in English and the original language.  In most cases you’ll also find an audio reading accompanies the story in often hard to find languages.  (Pretty cool to hear an entire story in Turkish, for example.) I’m already thinking about how I can use these resources to support newcomers, support and strengthen the longevity of heritage language skills with families, and even broaden perspectives on literature while using the audio story-telling components to build awareness of the need for (and beauty of) integrating additional language skills in historically English dominant classrooms.  So many ideas, so little time!  One caveat:  you’ll notice that the site is sponsored by philanthropists in the UK which means the English pronunciation will sound a bit different.  (I’m not aware of a similar site in the U.S., but would appreciate knowing about it if you’re willing to share in a reader-reply.)

3.  If you’re not using NewsELA as a source for non-fiction you’re missing out on a fantastic resource.  Daily news articles reflect highly current issues on a global scale.  In addition to the multi-lexiled options for each story, AND the Spanish-language versions, AND the standards based Q&As that follow each lexiled version of a story, I also appreciate that a significant number of news stories are chosen for their appeal to students across a broad cultural base.  NewsELA also offers a balance of stories that speak to tragedy as well as triumph.  There are text sets to help you locate stories along a theme, or you can search stories by categories across 12 grades and along 8 reading standards.  Although it’s intended use is K-12, I’m even using stories from the site to help a 20 year-old EL improve his English reading and comprehension skills before an upcoming entrance exam for a local GED-Connections class. I pull stories from this site nearly every week for my adult ELs, and they can’t seem to get enough of these articles.   Are you getting the message that I <3 NewsELA?!

Where do you find resources for broadening the cultural base of literature with your students?

 

 

 

How to Serve High Proficiency ELs

Recently an educator approached me with concerns that several ELs were intentionally underperforming on assessments as a way to remain in the EL program. The teacher reported that student scores were consistently hovering just under the exit criteria.

I can relate to this educator’s frustration. This is a phenomenon I encounter in my own classroom during assessments, and I continually fight an internal battle with myself in an effort to refrain from seeing student scores as “intentional under-performance.”  Why is it that our first impulse is to look to the student rather than consider what else we can do as teachers?

Most everyone’s heard the prevailing wisdom that “lower is faster, higher is slower” to explain the plateaus students experience when developing language proficiency. I try to seek understanding in this first, but like the educator who approached me for advice there have also been times when I’ve wondered just how long it’s going to take to move a higher proficiency student over that last little bump.

I asked several colleagues how they’ve approached this phenomenon, but garnered little that offered much direction. At long last I’ve located a very readable and realistic paper that offers practical suggestions for “high proficiency ELs” by Faridah Pawan and Anita Seralathan.   Aptly titled “Moving on Up with WIDA: Helping Near-Proficient English Learners Reach Full Proficiency “  you can find a down-loadable version on page 29 of the Indiana Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (INTESOL) Journal, Summer 2015.

In user-friendly terms, Pawan and Seralathan identify the lack of research that focuses on “high proficiency ELs”, and use case study examples from teachers in the field to offer evidence and resources that enable students “to also identify their own abilities and areas where help is needed” (p 38).

Another over-looked area when correlating academic content and language development is the cultural component. Language skill may seemed to have plateaued, but we often fail to consider that this may actually be the result of a lack of cultural competency related to the academic content. Pawan and Seralathan offer an example by quoting the experience an EL teacher shared of her students “reading Dante’s Inferno or the Scarlet Letter with little to no understanding of Christianity or the bible…while your language might be up to the task, it is untranslatable to you.” (p 40)

Pawan and Seralathan have generously sprinkled suggestions for using resources like WebQuest and Linguafolio throughout the paper, and offer examples of rubrics for scaffolding based on linguistics, conceptual, and social-cultural development.

Finally, Pawan and Seralathan cite examples of collaborative approaches taken by content and EL teachers to address the needs of “high proficiency ELs.”

I’d like to know of your experiences with students who hover at the upper end of the proficiency scale. What have you discovered? And what have you found useful in enabling students to move beyond the plateaus indicated on assessment measures?

ESSA’s Impact on ELs

If you don’t regularly follow the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) “Capital Connections” weekly e-newsletter, you might want to tune in and check out their comparison of ESSA NCLB here.   ASCD’s clarification on the implementation of ESSA communicates that:

“NCLB waivers expire on August 1, 2016, and ESSA will be implemented as the law of the land beginning in the 2017-2018 school year.”  ASCD, Capital Connections

In a previous post I provided links to a set of comparative tables created by the  Alliance for Excellent Education.  However, I appreciate ASCD’s tables for several explicit references pertaining to the impacts of ESSA on English learners – and even more specifically in the areas of  Assessments and Accountability. You can find the full set of ASCD comparative tables here.

“[ESSA] shifts accountability for English language learners into Title I; allows schools to phase in the use of English language learner’s test results for accountability purposes.”  — ASCD, Capital Connections

While it remains to be seen how MO DESE* and MELL** will communicate the impacts of ESSA to Missouri educators of English learners, I’ll post information as it becomes available. From what I can see at this early stage of development, it seems that in several instances MO DESE has more rigorous expectations of districts than the Feds. Time will tell if I’m wrong in my assumption, but the way I see it unless MO DESE were to relax its expectations of educators in our state I imagine Missouri will continue status quo – at least in the short term.  This article from Melissa Tooley over at New America aligns with my thoughts:

“Under ESSA, states still must test students in grades 3-8 and once in high school and use test results to inform their assessment of schools’ performance. And states are still required to break out school performance by student demographic subgroups, and intervene in schools where specific subgroups of students are chronically performing extremely poorly. But ESSA allows states to develop their own school accountability rating systems, providing only rough guidelines for how to identify schools in need of improvement. Also, ESSA limits the number of schools states must target for improvement and expects local school districts to step in and help struggling schools. States must only step in if districts are unsuccessful in helping schools improve. And while that’s all actually quite similar to what states with NCLB waivers are doing now, under ESSA, there is no requirement that states put teacher accountability and improvement systems in place, though they have the option to do so.”  – Melissa Tooley, Reporter, NewAmerica.org

An interesting point that Tooley raises near the end of her article is that one downfall of NCLB was that its requirement for school improvement wasn’t explicit enough —  many schools had no idea how to initiate steps to create the necessary changes. Tooley believes under ESSA schools may continue to sweep quality improvements of teachers (and therefore, student learning) under the rug as long as the “larger community is content” that a “majority of students are doing well”. The implications for ELs is that historically they remain a small enough subgroup in many districts that it proves Tooley’s observation sadly valid. But as the numbers of ELs in Missouri continues to grow, those of us who focus on this amazing demographic of students may find increasing opportunities to showcase the strengths of ELs and EL Education Specialists.
What are your questions or thoughts about the impact of ESSA on EL education?

*Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education
**Missouri Migrant Education and English Language Learners

Facts, Figures, and Useful Graphics

Ever wish you could find useful data about AMAO’s for Missouri and other states?  Wish no longer: http://ncela.ed.gov/t3sis/Missouri.php

The link above offers data and graphics in categories such as:

  • Title III Served English Learners (ELs) in Missouri School Districts
  • Top Five Languages Spoken in Missouri
  • Percentage of English Learners Making Progress in AMAO’s I, II, and III (including Monitored Former English Learners)
  • Number of Certified/Licensed Teachers Working in Title III Instruction Educational Programs
  • High School Graduation Rates of ELs Compared to All Graduating Students in Missouri

Here’s a peek at what you can find:

SOURCE: EDFacts / Consolidated State Performance Report, 2012-13 and 2013-14
SOURCE: EDFacts / Consolidated State Performance Report, 2012-13 and 2013-14

What ideas do you have for using this data?  And what other data would you find helpful?

ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) and ELs

Resources at this link compares key changes in policy between NCLB, ESEA, and ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act).

Although the comparisons linked above don’t include how the changes affect ELs specifically, you can get an unofficial but factual idea from the following blog post by Conor Williams of the  New America Foundation.

What are your questions about the impact of ESSA on EL education in Missouri?